For weeks and weeks my email has been peppered with notes from people in Illinois along the lines of this one: "You keep talking about Pat Hughes, but what about Adam Andrzejewski? He’s a dream candidate. He’s a Rubio." Everyone these days calls their candidate a Rubio. Guess what? Andrzejewski is a Rubio — well spoken, attractive, conservative to his core, and with a zealous band of conservative supporters. Oh, and he strikes fear and dread into the heart of the old guard Republicans who led Illinois off the cliff into the hands of an even more corrupt Democrat Party. Let me say one more thing about Andrzejewski that I have not said about Marco Rubio. In his uniqueness as a candidate, his story, and the sheer dread he instills in the corrupt old guard of Illinois, he is politically numinous. Yeah. I’ve become convinced. That is a very bold statement, but the ferver for this guy is, among desperate voters in Illinois hungering for truth, honesty, and transparency in government, overwhelming. The movement to elect Adam Andrzejewski elected is akin to a quest. And outside of Illinois, he is on very few radars. Please click here for the rest of the post.

My big takeaway from President Obama’s speech yesterday is that he is walled off from reality in the White House and he has absolutely no clue what average Americans are feeling these days. Clearly, after stunning losses in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts over the past few months, this Administration was sent a message from the American people that they are mad at President Obama’s big government policies. He did not hear that message and he told them last night that he is pushing forward with ObamaCare and other big government ideas. They don’t want it. The President, when not blaming the Bush Administration for his problems, merely thinks that the American people are not listening to him. This is good news for conservatives, because the President’s speech last night shows that he will take no action to right the ship before Congressional elections this November and he seems incapable of a nuanced approach to politics that includes a mix of conservative and liberal approaches to problem solving. The President is like the Captain of the Titanic in April of 1912 steaming past huge icebergs in the hope that his ship of state somehow makes it until the end of the year without a catastrophic collision. Please click here for the rest of the post.

The President, not too surprisingly, said a lot last night in the State of the Union – and by that, I mean he used a lot of words. But what did the President actually propose? In short – it was the same thing we’ve been hearing from him since his campaign – the government creates jobs, the government needs to control healthcare, and the government needs to spend a lot on education. But it was notable in its inconsistency – proposing a (partial, and small) spending freeze while proposing massive government “investment” in numerous programs – and its disconnect from the free markets. Here is a quick summary . . . Please click here for the rest of the post.

In the wake of Scott Brown’s upset win in Massachusetts, Blue-Chip GOP candidates are coming out of the woodwork around the country. But there seems to be little progress in dark blue New York – at least when it comes to statewide races. With a dearth of good candidates (so far), New York may be one state where Democrats dodge a Republican wave that seems set to sweep the nation in 10 months. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Speaker (to be) Boehner predicted the other day that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will not be tried in New York City. It seems increasingly likely that he’s right, as Democrats grow more and more fearful of the political and security ramifications of these proceedings. With Schumer and Gillibrand now saying that they’re open to a different venue, and the White House no longer willing to stand by Eric Holder on this, it sounds as if Democrats are just trying how to backtrack on this without looking like flip-floppers… again. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Just when you think Charlie Crist’s no good, very bad, awful several weeks has finished bottoming out and is prepared to rebound, the bottom falls out and he sinks even further. Today, Crist is proclaiming himself a “McCain Republican”, stealing a talking point from Scott Brown in Massachusetts. I’ve got news for Charlie Crist — if we’re lucky, John McCain is going to get beaten by a conservative this year, just like Crist. And does he really want to further align himself with a man whose wife is now campaigning against Christians in Arizona and California, calling them “haters”? Note that the quote originally circulated that Crist had called himself a “DeMint Republican.” When I asked Senator DeMint about that, he said, “That’s nice if the governor said that, but I’m a Marco Rubio Republican.” If that’s not enough, consider Scott Rothstein. Please click here for the rest of the post.

One of the unwritten laws of opinion journalism is to never kick a man when he’s dead, at least, not until an appreciable amount of time has passed. The question is whether this can or should hold true for those who make their living by doing precisely that. The death at the age of 87 of pseudo-historian Howard Zinn raises this issue all over again, since very few academics have made a better living defaming the dead, with everyone from Columbus to Ronald Reagan, and thousands in between, being accused by the jocular old harpy of any number of hideous crimes, not one of whom, needless to say, being alive to answer the charges. It is, of course, the job of the historian to examine the acts of the deceased; and some consider it an equal part of their profession to pass judgement upon them. In the case of Zinn, however, he passed judgment with such slothful ease, and such obvious sadistic pleasure in issuing his condemnations, that one cannot muster up much sympathy at the prospect of the man’s memory dying by his own sword. There seems to be some awareness of this fact even among his many admirers in the media. The major outlets have proven surprisingly tardy to mark the man’s passing, as if they were at a loss to find a way to describe him and his work without arousing the ire of their readership. This shouldn’t come as much a surprise, since the entire industry of Zinn (and it is an industry) tends to do everything within its power to cover up the man’s anti-Americanism, authoritarianism, and his flagrant abuses of his ostensible profession. Any display of the deceased’s actual beliefs and accomplishments, they seem to fear, might expose the fact that the emperor wore no clothes. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Erick Erickson is the Editor-in-Chief of RedState. His RedState Morning Briefing stays ahead of competition by delivering breaking news at 5AM every weekday to an audience that includes everyone from grassroots activists to talk radio hosts, television pundits, and print journalists. Erickson also appears regularly as a contributor on Fox News and has a nightly radio program on WSB in Atlanta.